End-to-end service quality in a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Network

Abstract

Apparatus and methods are provided for delivering end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. According to one embodiment, a portion of available bandwidth between a first and second network device is reserved as a Quality of Service (QoS) resource pool for real-time communication sessions among users of a first and second user community. The first network device is communicatively coupled with a packet network and associated with the first user community. The second network device is communicatively coupled with the packet network and associated with the second user community. End-to-end application QoS is provided between the first and second user communities by selectively admitting real-time communication sessions between the first user community and the second user community based upon currently available resources associated with the QoS resource pool and multiplexing the real-time communication sessions over a reservation protocol session between the first and second network devices.

Description

[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 423,189, filed Nov. 1, 2002, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 634,035, filed Aug. 8, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,013,338, entitled “Multiplexing Several Individual Application Sessions over a Pre-Allocated Reservation Protocol Session”, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. U.S. Pat. No. 7,013,338 claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 221,571, filed Jul. 28, 2000. This application is also a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 206,402, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,266,683, filed Jul. 27, 2002, entitled “Selective Encryption of Application Session Packets”, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. U.S. Pat. No. 7,266,683 claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 308,421, filed Jul. 27, 2001.COPYRIGHT NOTICE[0002]...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

While these solutions have been heavily marketed as QoS solutions, they have met with poor customer acceptance because they represent, at best, only partial solutions for IP QoS.

Even when used in conjunction with one another, there are several major deficiencies with the current approaches.

First, they are static in nature and non-adaptive to real-time network load and delay conditions which have critical effects on application performance such as voice.

Additionally, since these solutions typically require a manual and pre-determined traffic engineering process to identify optimal network routing and bandwidth, once the design is implemented in the network there is no ability to make intelligent routing and control decisions to compensate for dynamic network behavior.

Second, today's solutions are transport-centric with no awareness of the individual application flows running across the end-to-end network.

Thus, since no distinction can be made between packets, such as a voice packet and an ordinary data packet, for example, there is once again no ability to make intelligent routing and control decisions to ensure end-to-end application QoS.

Finally, there are a variety of other deficiencies depending on the mechanism being used.

In summary, today's IP QoS mechanisms and protocols provide a part of the solution to the problem, but have proven to be unworkable in real-world, voice, video and data IP networks.

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